PC POLICE AT CSU CAMPUS
BEING A BIT TOO CLOTHES-MINDED

From its conception, Cal State San Marcos has been practiced in the art of discerning prejudice.

In the 1980s, when it appeared that the new San Marcos campus would be a satellite of San Diego State, CSU Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds insisted on an independent university with the goal of creating leadership opportunities for women and minorities.

North County became home to a progressive campus with a heightened social conscience. The college’s devotion to multicultural correctness is a big strand of its DNA.

In the early ’90s, for example, the late state Sen. Bill Craven said that undocumented workers are on “the lower scale of humanity.”

Craven’s off-the-cuff remark, misconstrued as racist rather than descriptive of self-evident socio-economic status, so enraged the Academic Senate that it beseeched the CSU chancellor to strip the name of the university’s legislative father from campus landmarks.

Over the years, a few racially freighted incidents received intense media attention, in part because the young campus felt the alleged offenses so keenly.

Fair enough, so long as correctness doesn’t turn into puritanical intolerance for the colorful piñatas of life.

Along with academic freedom, isn’t there freedom to have harmless fun, free from joyless scolds?